I am a great admirer of teacherken. I read with interest his diary of today, They will have no choice but to impeach, and I am moved to disagree. Note that this is an opinion piece without a lot of research. I want to get the thoughts out there fast and let the Kosmos pick it apart. You may fire when ready, Griswold.
First, I agree wholeheartedly that any impeachment of the Idiot King would have to be a GOP initiative. The problem there is, the impeachment debate has turned so many corners, it has now transformed itself into a spiral, and a death spiral at that. I had written and said many times right after NSA that if the GOP had the sense God promised a nanny goat, the Republicans would bring a bill of impeachment. They didn’t.
And now it’s too late. The way I try to understand the time dynamics of politics is to count it backwards from immutable milestones. Our newest "long national nightmare" will be over, come Hell or high(Black)water by November 2008 when the little man will be turned into a house sitter for the last three months of his so-called public service.
So, counting backwards from November 2008, what is the practical effect? We’re already active in the presidential campaign season, a year ahead of the normal curve just because Bush’s inept and corrupt administration, with no potential internal successor, forces so much attention on the topic of the next president. This is also because so many key primaries have been advanced. Seems that we may know who the candidates are for each party by February 2008, which means a pseudo-campaign will have started long before the conventions, with attendant speculation and early polls about what it will mean for Congress as well.
As horrible a president as Bush can be from now until then, the GOP simply won’t do anything to focus more negative attention on "their" president once primary campaigning begins in earnest. Like it or not, he’s the GOP’s "boy" and they are stuck with him. If 2006’s debacle for the GOP in Congress was the result of an Iraq "feedback loop," think about how bad 2008 will be if there is an open and ongoing impeachment proceeding of a Republican president.
The casual observer, of which we are not but vast numbers of Americas are, will inevitably think impeachment + Bush=GOP. "Right track/wrong track" polling will be death on a soda cracker for Republicans. Potential GOP candidates will see this and will be impossible to recruit. Fundraising, already off to a bad start for the Repubs, will be even worse. Enthusiasm among the base will be nonexistent and GOTV stuck in the mud. What, I ask rhetorically, could possibly make a party look worse than removing its own president, a man they previously praised and defended? Oh, wait, there is an answer: REMOVING HIM THREE YEARS TOO LATE.
So that means impeachment has to take place in this year. This is April 2007, and Congress is on Spring recess. That means maybe four months or so of productive sessions before summer recess, but the FY 2008 budget, plus Iraq spending will consume this time. Then there are another three months of productive session before breaking for the end of the year.
Seven months. Seven in 07. I agree with teacherken that the Democrats won’t initiate impeachment, and for good reason. They control the parliamentary levers, which are already being used for investigations that range far beyond what the initial allegations of impeachment would entail (USA purging and GSA Hatch Act violations, I’m guessing, won’t track higher than Rove in terms of what can be proven up).
Mind you well that Nancy Pelosi has just stepped onto the world stage and done beautifully, despite Faux Noise’s eagerness to charge her with a felony for doing so (while remaining curiously silent on her GOP "co-conspirators"). She’s going to build on that, to establish the Democrats as the foreign policy and security brand of choice. She’s not going to want to relinquish that standing to go through the parliamentary rigors of an impeachment.
No, at this point, my guess is the Democrats are thinking, better to keep the living example of GOP failure in full public view for regular ass-whippings and do what can be done in Congress to constrain his ability to make real trouble. Job One for the Dems is to make Bush "Mr. Irrelevant" and so far it’s working.
As for the Republicans, their chance to impeach came and went after the NSA spying revelations. They settled for a "bunker approach" but had no idea they would be wandering in the land of resignation and revelation for a political eternity that continues today and is likely to grow worse.
Seven in 07. There’s just not enough time, and astonishingly, it’s the Democrats who would probably be the Republicans’ greatest obstacle. If I was John Conyers, I’d accept a Republican-sponsored impeachment resolution with great somberness and politeness and say "We’ll get to it as soon as we can" then bottle it up in the Judiciary Committee for as long as possible. And that’s the kiss of death for the GOP. If Republicans are going to impeach, it has to be done and over with this year and they know it.
And they have to accept President Pelosi, since there will be no impeachment deal that doesn’t also take down Cheney. Oh, and lest we forget, there’s no way Conyers and Pelosi are going to allow an impeachment if they don’t also get a certainty of removal and that’s where Harry Reid comes it. He won’t OK a Gingrich-esque charade of an impeachment without the 67 votes needed in the Senate for removal. Where do they come from? We can count on Bernie Sauders (Independent), but Lieberman (Lieberman for Lieberman) is beyond hope of rescue and Tim Johnson will probably still be recovering, so we start out with 48, right? Find me 19 Republican Senators who can be convinced to vote for impeachment.
It can’t be done. It would require Harry Reid to be convinced that at least 19 Republican Senators will give him their word that they will vote for the removal of Bush and Cheney. The downside is, failure to remove both the Tsar and Rasputin will be seen as a victory, sanctifying an imperial presidency. If I’m Reid, I don’t put myself in that position. I’m not doing anything that could rehabilitate this evil and stupid administration.
So maybe there’s an outside hope for the state-driven impeachment movement. Don’t count on it. I don’t care what the Constitution says about this power—there will have to be multiple resolutions advanced by state legislatures for Congress to seriously consider it. Without researching each state’s rules and procedures, I’m willing to bet the state’s Democrats will need full party control to get their bill or resolution or whatever it is to be legally legitimate. Beyond that, I would ask, is action needed by the state’s governor? I don’t know, but you can bet that any Republican governor will say that he or she has to be involved in the process. So you’ve got to take this down to states where there is a Democratic governor and full party control in the legislature.
There is a time problem here, too. Many states are already wrapping up their 2007 legislative sessions. Off the cuff, I’d say only Illinois and New Jersey have full Democratic party control of the legislature and the governor’s office and are in session long enough in 2007 to legally effectuate state-driven impeachment. Besides, those states have their own issues. Members of those legislatures run for re-election on money for roads and schools, tougher DUI laws, and now health care, plus other local concerns, not about what happens in the Beltway.
So what’s left to provoke an impeachment? Attacking Iran? My main point in response to that is, if not last week, when? If Bush attacks, it will have to be in 2007 because even he and Cheney won’t leave a potential incoming Republican president with two wars. If he did attack, the House could rise up as an institution and demand his, and Cheney’s removal, but that doesn’t get us past the 67 vote problem in the Senate. I just don’t see the likes of Brownback, Kyl, Domenici and Inhofe of that world, and certainly not McCain, stepping up even in that circumstance; Christ, they’d praise the dunderhead. We might get a Hagel or a Snowe, but even Warner would be on the fence, at best.
I don’t see Conyers acting without Reid’s green light even in that horrendous circumstance. Instead, I think we’d see a lot of action in Congress that the GOP could support that would tie Bush’s hands as much as possible, including censure and maybe even a serious and effective push to de-fund the Iraq occupation. I don’t think Bush will risk a war of choice he is losing on a second war of choice; he’s too narcissistic not to know what that will do to whatever shreds of a legacy remain for him.
So there you have it. As much as I agree morally, legally and ethically with teacherken, my take is that impeachment isn’t "off the table" but rather, impeachment is not possible in the logistics of our political reality. If there was going to be an impeachment, it would have come after the NSA revelations, and it would have been a Republican impeachment. But that ship has sailed. The GOP is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t, so they might as well sign up for "don’t," campaign for their political lives and hope for the best.
After November 2008, however, the GOP might be ready to go the way of the Whigs. It is going to be bad, very bad, and that might be the best that they get.